


nobody jumps up after they just freaking died, okay? let's have some realism here

by sarahenany



Category: Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-21
Updated: 2016-06-21
Packaged: 2018-07-16 09:44:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7262872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarahenany/pseuds/sarahenany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seriously, Hollywood? Jumping into a car three seconds after being, um, dead? I took a few hours after the scene where Ethan revives in the movie to show what SHOULD have happened. I think this counts as get-Ethan and get-Benji.<br/>Also, if you can suggest a better title, I'm all ears.</p>
            </blockquote>





	nobody jumps up after they just freaking died, okay? let's have some realism here

 

Ethan Hunt hated feeling helpless. _Hated_ it.

Hated feeling like he did now. His muscles wouldn’t do what he wanted them to do, his blood was water. The nerves and sinews supposed to be holding him together weren’t doing their _job,_ dammit. And there were _things_ to be done.

The nerves and sinews holding him up weren’t his own. They were Benji’s. And Ethan hated it. Hated it.

He didn’t hate Benji, of course. Benji was the one source of strength in this freefall of a mission. Well, and Ilsa, only Benji didn’t trust her, but—

God, his head was heavy.

“Easy, buddy. Easy now, easy. You just died. You’ve got to rest. Just for a little bit, all right, Ethan? Here,” Benji got his arm round Ethan, supporting Ethan’s weight, “just let me do all the work. That’s right. Atta boy.”

He kind of knew the plan: get him home to Ilsa’s Morocco hideaway to recuperate. But there wasn’t _time_ for him to recuperate, there was no time to be lying around in a bed while there was a—

Why wouldn’t his eyes focus?

“Here we are.” Benji was leaning him against the side of a car, _leaning him_ this was _ridiculous_ why WHY couldn’t he just _stand on his own two feet and—_ “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Not just yet.”

Ethan had made an abortive attempt to push up off the smooth metal surface, and almost faceplanted on the concrete. Strong arms encircled him, a strength that wasn’t his own, powerful muscle and sinew he never associated with Benji, although logically he knew that Benji was field-certified but he was just so used to thinking of him as the little genius who helped him through missions. “Like my guardian angel,” he said out loud.

“’Scuse me?” In the time Ethan had been daydreaming, Benji had somehow poured him into the passenger seat and clicked the seatbelt closed. Benji didn’t need to do that. Ethan’s hands were working perfectly fine. He tried to raise his arm to prove a point. _Shit,_ he _hated_ it when his body wouldn’t work as it should. Luckily, he had his guardian angel.

“Hardian dangel,” he said loudly. “You’re mer dar—barden bagel.”

Benji’s wide blue eyes met his with such worry that Ethan was torn between laughing and crying. The affection in his friend’s gaze was humbling. “I promise to feed you and everything as sure as I’m confident you’re all right. You’re going to be groggy for twenty-four hours or so, but it’ll pass. I promise it’ll pass. Scout’s honor.”

Benji had the passenger closed and was in the driver’s seat and clicking the seatbelt shut before Ethan thought to ask whether they had the Boy Scouts in the UK.

* * *

 

By the time they got to the house, Ethan was glad. He really was kind of cold.

His shaking appeared to worry Benji, too, because he said a lot of things about “getting you warm.” He didn’t really remember much about being got out of the car, coddled and made a shameful fuss of, all but carried up the stairs; he was dizzy, feeling like he was free-falling. Benji said something about the brain reacting to oxygen deprivation and asking Ilsa something or other and “Don’t worry, Ethan, you’re going to be all right,” very, very firmly and more than once, until he believed it, and just fell, and let Benji catch him.

There was a room, and dry clothes, and a heater, and blankets. Then there was a hot sweet mug of something, which he was told in no uncertain terms to drink. The only problem was, his hands weren’t working too well.

“Here, hang on a mo.” Ethan was sat down on the edge of a bed—it was wobbly and he felt he would fall, and he flailed. But then Benji’s warm weight was next to him on the mattress, pressed up close with an arm round Ethan’s back, his other hand taking the mug’s weight, holding it steady and preventing spills, while letting Ethan’s hands guide it to his lips. “Easy, now. That’s right… Good. You’re doing fine, Ethan, doing great, be good as new in no time.”

Ethan chafed against inactivity. He hated helplessness, needing, always, to _keep moving,_ to follow a task till the finish, to keep going till Mission Accomplished. Only it wasn’t. And it needed to be. It had to be, or more lives would be lost. And here he was, drinking hot chocolate. Hot chocolate! That was what it was! “Hochoclit,” he slurred, trying to sit up straight and nearly spilling it all over himself and Benji.

His friend was alert, though, and steadied both Ethan and the mug. “Yes, well, brandy only works in the films. Besides which, I’m not a Saint Bernard, and that’s only in the films too.”

They shouldn't be here drinking hot chocolate. They should be using the disk to bring down Lane. "Mission," he muttered.

"Your mission right now is sleep." Benji's voice was still sad. Why was Benji sad? He shouldn't be sad. But Ethan couldn't think. His head was heavy and the bed was so soft, and Benji was so gentle with him, strong like Gibraltar, lifting him into bed and laying him down and ordering him to rest, and gentle like a mother, taking off his shoes and covering him up and adjusting the pillows under him so he could breathe more easily. Then Benji sat down beside him, knowing without being told that Ethan would go back into freefall if he was left alone, his side warm against Ethan’s back and his hand warm on Ethan’s shoulder and his voice warm in Ethan’s ear, babbling on about inanities and letting him know that everything was all right and Ethan could just let go, let Benji take care of things for a little while.

_No. No, I need to be in control. Anything could happen…_

Benji started smoothing Ethan’s hair back from his face. “Just rest, buddy,” he murmured, and the affection in that painfully familiar, beloved English voice of his pierced all the way into Ethan’s heart and broke it open, and he couldn’t resist anymore. “All right? Mischief and mayhem will still be there tomorrow. Probably double, won’t it, because they do say evil never rests and we’re resting right now and if you even think of trying to get up out of that bed, God help me, Ethan, I will handcuff you with a pair of pink fluffy handcuffs adorned with fucking rabbit fur and take pictures, and blackmail you with the entire IMF, it would be good to have leverage against you like that, in fact I think maybe I ought to do that, just on general principle…”

Ethan had to admit that his head _was_ spinning, even lying on the bed, and he felt like he was going to throw up. He shivered a bit, his stomach flipping uncomfortably. Immediately, Benji was pulling the covers higher, tucking them around him, but leaving his hands free because, bless him, he knew an agent doesn’t like to be restrained. Then, suddenly, Benji’s hand was around Ethan’s, warm and secure, and it gave him something to hold onto. The strong clasp seemed to push away the waves of dizziness and nausea. “Deep breaths, okay. Ethan? Deep breaths. Just nice and slow now. It’ll pass. You’ll be fine, you’re going to be fine, buddy, you just need to get a bit of rest and quit being such a stubborn arse for just this once, all right? Yeah, that’s the ticket. Keep breathing now…”

Ethan’s hand tightened around Benji’s like a lifeline as he finally drifted off.

* * *

 

Ilsa was cleaning her gun as Benji came downstairs. “How is he?”

“All right.” Benji looked at her bowed head. “Thanks to you.”

Her voice came evenly from behind a curtain of dark hair. “It wasn’t your fault.”

The world stood still. The words seemed to fall into a void he hadn’t known existed. And now she had said it, it made perfect sense. “What do you mean it wasn’t? ‘Course it was.” His voice was more bitter than he’d intended. “There I was, blithely going on about how it was a piece of cake, how it was easy. And that was the mission he…” A spiral of sick stabbed him in the stomach. “He _died._ What do you mean it wasn’t?”

“Would he have done it without you?”

Benji blinked.

Ilsa looked up from her weapon, pulling her hair back and securing it with a piece of elastic, as Benji thought about it. Finally, he said, “I wouldn’t have let him go it alone if that’s what you mean. But yeah, you know Ethan… or maybe you don’t,” he amended with a rueful half-grin. “Always gung-ho to get the bad guys. He’s got into more scrapes than anyone can count because of it.”

“That’s what I meant,” she said evenly. “I’m asking if he would have done it even if you hadn’t said it was simple and easy. If you had tried to persuade him not to do it and he had been determined, would he have desisted?”

“Desisted?” Benji barked a laugh. “You don’t know Ethan. Into the Jaws of Death, rode the Six Hundred.” He suddenly swallowed, as though mentioning death had called up death’s spectre. He waved a too-casual hand. “Yeah.”

“So he would have done it whether you said it was easy or not,” Ilsa concluded. “Therefore, it wasn’t your fault.”

Benji drew in air, deep, feeling it fill his lungs and push his ribcage outwards. Air. Ethan had had none. And Benji hadn’t been there to save him. “Thank you for what you did,” he said quietly. “I can’t thank you enough. Never could, really.”

She bent to her weapon again. “Don’t worry about it.” After a moment, she said, “You should really get some sleep.”

Benji nodded. He didn’t feel completely absolved of all blame, but at least he wasn’t feeling _too_ much like he’d pushed Ethan out of a plane without a parachute. “I will, thanks,” he said.

* * *

 

He padded upstairs in his socked feet and gently pushed open the door to Ethan’s room. Ethan lay on his side, one hand roving back and forth over the bedspread, fist opening and closing. For a moment Benji thought he was awake, and had taken several paces into the room before his eyes acclimated to the darkness and he realized, with a pang, that Ethan was dreaming, groping for the handle of the exit even in sleep.

Before he could think too much about it, Benji had crossed the room and taken the blindly searching hand in his own. “Hey,” he said softly. “It’s all right. I’m here.”

Ethan gripped Benji’s hand tight, shuddered once, and relaxed, his breathing evening out.

Benji stared down at Ethan. Ethan had… _died._ For _him._ He couldn’t quite get his head around it yet. He didn’t want to; he was sure he’d be much, much happier not knowing. And no, it didn’t help knowing that Ethan would have done the same for any other teammate, that that was just who he was, Ethan Against-All-Odds Hunt, who would quite literally get it done or die trying. Because at the end of the day, it was him, Benji, whom Ethan had been protecting. He was the one Ethan had died for.

“One of these days…” The words stopped his breath. He could see it in his mind’s eye all too clearly: Ethan falling off a plane, dying in a car crash, suffocating and drowning. His hand tightened on Ethan’s, and received an answering grip.

Carefully, so as not to wake Ethan, Benji lay down on his side on top of the bedspread, facing Ethan, still holding his hand. He snugged up a pillow under his neck. “At least this way I’ll be sure you’re not getting up to anything,” he said.

* * *

 

_Water. Dark. Danger._

_Ethan’s hands fumbled with the identification cards, but his grip wouldn’t work. His fingers were numb, his lungs burning. He desperately aimed for the tiny slot; the cards kept hitting solid metal. Benji would be getting closer. “If you don’t replace the card in time, I’m dead.” Dead. Dead. Dead. Ethan could see the corridor, see the security men, no, he WAS a security man, fumbling for the cards, god his fumbling fingers wouldn’t work._

_Benji was walking past the security scanner. It whirred to life, sliding up and down the corridor as he walked. Alone. Defenceless. His life in Ethan’s hands. As it had been since that day he turned up in Vienna. It was all down to Ethan, and he was going to fail. He would have died rather than let anyone touch a hair of Benji’s dear head, and now…_

_He looked at the cards in his hand. But now they were identical. He could no longer tell which was the right one. He stared and stared, knowing Benji was depending on him. Finally, in desperation, he slotted in a card._

_He was still a security guard. How—What—He was just in the tunnel— On the screen, the text flashed, DENIED._

_The weapons in the cameras activated. Machine-guns peppered Benji with bullets. Ethan bolted up from the computer screen in shock. Weren’t they made to disable, not kill? He had distinctly seen stun-guns, not…_

_The rat-tat-tat of automatic gunfire echoed through the curved corridor. Bullets raked Benji’s chest. His body exploded in blood, torn apart by a hail of bullets. Benji screamed, kept screaming until his lungs were too shredded to scream anymore. Torn to pieces, he fell._

_Ethan ran to him. He didn’t know whether he was a guard or what he was doing here anymore, all he knew was that Benji was dying and he had failed him. He’d have given his life to prevent it. Benji was dying. Benji was dying._

_He reached him after what felt like a lifetime. Falling to his knees, he scooped up his shattered, bleeding friend. “Benji,” he choked out, holding him in his lap, rocking him. Blood was pouring from great ragged furrows in Benji’s chest, too many to close, too many to heal. His body was one shrieking wound. Benji opened his mouth to speak, but when he opened it, it was full of blood. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe. He was dying, already dead._

_Dead for Ethan. Because he had come to him. Because Ethan had been too weak to go it alone. Because he’d sent for Benji. Because Ethan hadn’t sent him away when he’d had the chance. Because Ethan hadn’t been good enough, skilled enough, quick enough. He’d held that precious life in his hands, and let it shatter. Ethan’s heart twisted, feeling like it was being pulled apart._

_Benji’s blue eyes were bloodshot, blood trickling from them like tears. Ethan lifted him, held him closer, Benji’s dying head pillowed on Ethan’s chest. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”_

_Benji was warm in his arms, still warm, his blood soaking Ethan’s hands, soaking Ethan’s suit. He raised his arms to hold Ethan. Ethan helped him, eased his arms around his, Ethan’s neck, gathering Benji in so close that he could feel his heartbeat. If he could give him his own heartbeat, he could. He would have died to keep this from happening, he would have died gladly. “I’m sorry.” He rocked Benji, cradled him like a child, feeling the life sighing out of him, still rocking him, unable to let him go, unable to leave his corpse. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."_

_“Shh, now, nothing to be sorry about._ Unless it’s taking crazy risks.” Benji’s arms were tight around him, holding him close and warm, Benji’s hand stroking Ethan’s head. “Shh. It’s all right. It’s all right, Ethan, we’re here, we’re safe. You saved me.” Benji’s voice was a little unsteady. “You died for me, remember?”

“Worth it.” Ethan burrowed into Benji’s hold, wrapping his arms tight around Benji’s back. Wait—no holes. No injuries.

Ethan’s eyes snapped open and he pushed back from the embrace. Bed? Dark? Wait, what—

“Easy, buddy,” Benji murmured. “You were dreaming,” but Ethan was frantically fumbling for the bullet holes that had torn Benji’s chest to pieces. Nothing but smooth cotton covering intact skin and muscle. He reached around, ran his hands up and down Benji’s back. Intact. No wounds. No horrific ragged skin and torn flesh. No blood.

Just gentle hands on Ethan’s shoulders, a soft, loving voice in his ear. “I’m all right. You were dreaming. I know. I know. Shh. It’s safe. We’re safe. You did it, Ethan, though I wish you hadn’t but it’s all right, I’m here. I’m here, we’re all right. We’re safe.”

Ethan stilled for a moment, hands splayed over Benji’s back, letting the comforting words wash over him. His hands told him what his mind still couldn’t quite believe: Benji was safe, intact, alive.

Cutting off Benji’s litany, he lunged into a tight hug, pulling Benji into him. Warm. Solid. Safe. Alive. He pressed his cheek against Benji’s as the tears came.

“Ah, Ethan.” The affection in Benji’s voice tore apart what was left of Ethan’s control, and he cried into Benji’s shoulder as Benji returned the hug, unabashedly snuggling into Ethan. His hold was warm, and full of life. He cupped Ethan’s head in his hand and pulled him in tight; he massaged Ethan’s back with his other hand, murmuring comfort, telling him over and over again that he was safe, that he was whole, that he was loved. Ethan clutched at Benji’s shirt, held desperately onto his living body, and cried.

"I'm sorry," Benji muttered.

"What?" Ethan felt his tears dry in shock. "...why?"

"You did it for me." Benji's voice was bitter, dark. "You shouldn't die for me."

"Who else should I die for?" 

Ethan had said it without thinking; Benji's hand stilled on Ethan's back, and he realized what he'd said. Ethan tried to lighten his words by shrugging. Benji took a couple of deep breaths, then started rubbing Ethan's back again. "Well," he said, all forced lightness, "I don't want you dying for anyone, all right?"

This was familiar ground. This, Ethan could respond to. "Me neither."

"Good. Glad that's settled."

"You should have left," Ethan shook his head against Benji's arm. "When you had the chance."

"Wouldn't for the world."

That light assurance, that iron confidence, undid Ethan - the promise to be there as a matter of course, the pledge of his friend's support in the same tone as discussing the weather. He closed his eyes tight, vowing to always keep Benji safe, protect him with his life and more, whether Benji liked it or not. "Okay," he finally said.

“You seem stronger,” Benji murmured into his hair. “Good. Don’t get any ideas, though. We’ll see how you feel in the morning.”

Ethan half-pillowed his head on Benji’s arm. Benji wrapped his arms around him, a wordless _I’m here, I survived, you’re alive, I’m alive._ The aching relief of the embrace made Ethan’s eyes burn again. “I’m all right. I’m all right.”

“I’m sorry,” Ethan muttered.

“Shut up,” Benji said kindly. “We’ll discuss your antics when you’re better. Sleep.”

Ethan obeyed. Soon Benji followed suit.

* * *

 

Downstairs, Ilsa found the disk in Benji’s pocket. She slipped it out, put it in her bag. It was too bad she had to betray them like this. Still, duty was duty.

She quietly wheeled her motorcycle out of earshot, then mounted it and rode away.


End file.
